


Princes and Frogs

by puella_peanut



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Childhood Friends, F/M, Growing Up Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-20
Updated: 2016-10-20
Packaged: 2018-08-23 13:39:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8329960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/puella_peanut/pseuds/puella_peanut
Summary: In which all princes start as frogs and all gentlemen as dogs—in other words, Gilbert Beilschmidt is the boy next door, and it takes Rosamund Edelstein twenty-four years to realize he's rather far more to her than that.





	

_All princes start as frogs and all gentlemen as dogs_  
_Just wait till its plain to see_  
_What we're growing up to be_  
_'Cause some frogs will still be frogs_  
_And some dogs will still be dogs_  
_Some boys could become men_  
_Just don't kiss us 'til then -_ Princes and Frogs, Superchick

.

.

_baby and three  
_

.

.

Rosamund Edelstein is three years old when she meets the boy next door for the first time.

The Beilschmidt... _creature,_ is a gurgling mass of neighborhood baby in a stroller—red faced and wrinkly and corpulent as a person of such limited days usually are. Rosamund scrunches her nose, averting blue eyes in disdain at the sight of him—lofty in a way only toddlers can be.

Still, she does not refuse when his mother asks if she wants to hold... _the thing,_ and suddenly Rosamund finds that the squirming, unpleasant bundle has been deposited in her arms. She's a tiny morsel of childhood herself, and Gilbert is surprisingly heavy...but he smells freshly powdered, and for one fleeting moment, when he beams that gummy, toothless smile up at her—she thinks he's not _so_ bad.

(A moment later he is however, when he spits up on her pinafore).

And Rosamund decides right then and there that she'll despise him for the rest of her life.

.

.

_three and six_

.

.

Living next door to the Beilschmidt brat is like having an itch one can't _quite_ scratch.

She leaves for school—he sucks his thumb anxiously, watching with beady eyes and squashed face from his kitchen window. She arrives home at three—his freckles beam relief at her over the fence. She sits in her back-yard hosting tea parties and balls with the porcelain companionship of dolls—he pokes his pug nose through a crack, not bothered that he wasn't given an invite.

When this routine suddenly stops, Rosamund sighs in satisfaction—but the two following days are lonesome, and with no sign of her shadow, she frets and wonders what happened.

Her answer comes on the third day as she's boarding the school-bus. There's a rapid tapping from the fence, and she manages to catch a glimpse of Gilbert—swollen nosed and watery eyed with a cold—before he is dragged back indoors by the straps of his overalls.

Three days later, the routine begins again.

.

.

_six and nine  
_

.

.

He's six years old, all bumps, bruises, and skinned knees hiding under yellow band-aids from learning to ride a bicycle.

Rosamund knows this, because Gilbert has a penchant for circling around the sidewalk; she knows this, because she has a penchant for watching him from her bedroom window. It's hard not to, since he makes himself so obvious; what with his pedal-pumping, his ungraceful falling—his frequent peeking up at her room to see if _she's_ looking at _him_ look at _her._

(The day he catches her, he grins in bold, freckle-faced triumph, and she tugs her curtains close with all the pettiness her years can muster.)

So when she passes Gilbert on the street, she sticks her nose in the air, smoothing down her frown like this is all beneath her—but that tug on her braids still come, as do the tell-a-tale patter of boyish footsteps running quickly away.

She rolls her eyes—just another day with the boy next door.

.

.

_nine and twelve  
_

.

.

At twelve, Rosamund discovers that foreign species of boys, but they don't discover her, as she is all angles no curves, with glasses occupying too much of her face, and silver strung braces that have a knack for blinding people when they catch in the light. She's in choir at school; a group _so low_ on the social ladder of adolescence that rungs have not been created yet.

She tells herself it doesn't bother her then, when she's rejected by popular Antonio for the class dance—but after school, it's Gilbert who finds her crumpled up against their shared fence, being bothered by it a whole lot.

Rosamund snaps at him to go away, but Gilbert just props himself on the boards, leans over, and she tastes something along the lines of summer, and second hand rainbows, and sweetness in suburbia. And it's only after the brat runs away, only after Rosamund opens her eyes—

—that she realizes she's been kissed.

.

.

_twelve and fifteen  
_

.

.

It's not destiny, just an unromantic overload of homework that has brought them to the library on the same day; Gilbert wrestling with algebra, and Rosamund with Doctor Zhivago. He doesn't _dare_ share a table with her, but now and then she catches him looking her way, all bright eyes, nervous smiles.

(Looking taller, all of a sudden.)

Break-time is a must, as is the drink Gilbert buys her from the vending machine—and Rosamund hides the twitch of her lips behind polite sips of strawberry soda as his voice cracks repeatedly, despite his valiant attempts to keep it even as he eagerly chit-chats with her.

When he hopefully suggests a movie after they're done studying, she declines.

But _something_ in his face makes her propose another option, and he eagerly accepts, walking her home under moonlight several hours later. He's paid for his efforts with her pretty smile at the door—and upon departing, looks like he's been handed the stars.

.

.

 

_fifteen and eighteen  
_

.

.

Antonio and she were _over,_ to begin with.

They had been on the verge of breaking-up for a long time now, but catching him pressed against the jail-bait Vargas brat had sped the process up considerably, and brought prom night to a screeching halt.

Barricaded in her room's midnight darkness, dress piled in wasted lavender froth around her, Rosamund looks up and sees Gilbert looking right back at her beyond the mesh of the window. His fingers grip the sill, strained white around the knuckles, and Rosamund rushes over, meaning to scold him for dangling there—but Gilbert just shushes her, tilts forward, and presses his mouth against hers through the barrier.

His lips are inviting, and Rosamund plays with the thought of letting the screen up—but this _thrilling_ idea is cut short when Gilbert looses his footing and lands painfully in thorny rosebushes below.

And Rosamund forgets about ex-boyfriends and crying in bathroom stalls in muffled giggles at Gilbert's expense.

.

.

_eighteen and twenty-one  
_

.

.

Rosamund doesn't expect to see Gilbert in the auditorium, de-frocked from a sea of blue-robed graduates in ripped jeans, loud t-shirt broadcasting rock-groups across his chest with names she can never remember—she searches nonetheless.

She's been given her diploma and the matching degree; a box of imported chocolate, green teddy-bear—it's _him_ she wants, though.

Outside on the university steps, people pose with ugly faces for pretty pictures, and the wind knocks Rosamund's cap from her head, tousling her updo to ruin as it soars into the fountain for an unprecedented paddle.

She hurries to fish it out, but someone with longer legs gets there first.

Later, Rosamund doesn't think how her cap dampened his head, or that the bouquet had been stolen from familiar rosebushes—how long distance driving rimmed burgundy eyes in shadows, or that chuckle when dainty heels trod upon dirty sneakers.

She only knows that when she ran, Gilbert was already there waiting to catch her.

.

.

_twenty-one and twenty-four  
_

.

.

Freckles are scattered like constellations across his skin, Rosamund muses when she wakes up with him. She fingertips wanderings of secret maps across even breaths of slumber, the sharp turn of jawline—tow-colored brows pulling close, bridging futures together.

Under her persistent fingers, his nose twitches, eyes shuffling open. Gilbert catches her stray touches in his palm and grins.

 _"Mornin', Princess,"_ he greets, voice rough with lingering sleep. But his hand tightens across her waist nonetheless, pulling her towards himself. Like always. A dark ringlet tucked away for safekeeping, he reaches for a kiss, uncaring of morning breath. She doesn't mind, _much_ —she's grown used to his ways.

In his arms Rosamund remembers childhood forts, sidewalk skinned knees; backseats of secondhand cars. Late night calls, stolen ribbons, postcards; twenty-four years worth of memories in shoeboxes.

And she doesn't know when it started or why it did—

—but she discovers suddenly that she loves this boy next door, and perhaps she always has.


End file.
